So his father lectured now on astronomy and the cosmos.

It seemed that the moon was always there, or about there, a lonesome old thing, because there was no life on it.

Dave spoke learnedly, for his Sunday paper had devoted a page to something of this sort.
"Everything is electricity or something," said Dave, "and it crackles and works on itself until it makes star dust, and it shakes this together till it makes lumps, and they float round, and pretty soon they're big lumps like the moon and like this little ball of star dust we're riding on--and there are millions of them out there all round and about, some a million times bigger than this little one, and they all whirl and whirl, the little ones whirling round the big ones and the big ones whirling round still bigger ones, dancing and swinging and going off to some place that no one knows anything about; and some are old and have lost their people; and some are too young to have any people yet; but millions like this one have people, and on some they are a million years older than we are, and know everything that it'll take us a million years to find out; but even they haven't begun to really know anything--compared with what they don't know.

They'll have to go on forever finding out things about what it all means.

Do you understand that, Bill ?" "Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Do you understand how people like us get on these whirling lumps ?" "Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"How do they ?" "No, sir," said Wilbur.
"Well, it's simple enough.